Re: Australia v England

[wiggydoran]

if you ain't watch the match sorry to spoil it with the following post.

I am not impressed with the refering standerd shown in this game. AUS got most 50/50 call and then they got some calls they should not have had.

1st one was the lewis 2nd try. Billy slater knocked on after chasing the kick. The ref gives benfit of the doubt. HOW CAN HE DO THAT? Benfit of the doubt should only be used when the refs camera angels are not brillant. This one was in plain site. No Try should have been the call. AUS gain 6 points through crap refs.

2nd one was the Brett Tates try. No way did he ground that. You can clearly see air between his hand and the ball. When you look how the ball comes up after the attepted grounding it clear bounces upwards. This to me confrims the video eveidance that he did not ground it.
Aus gain 4 points

3rd was the forward pass in the build up Tuqui try.
Aus gain another 4 points.

4th was Lunts ref call. This one really winds me up. The ref did not see the guy ground the ball so he passes it up stair. On the replay you can see the ball on the ground but you can't see the white wash hitting the ball. You can see that the ball was mm from the line if it did not touch. The video ref gives refs call(crap house). This should have been benfit of the doubt. england should have had an extra 6 points.


IF you take the above into consideration the game would have been a lot closer. I think AUS is better then we are but i think the ref decisions helped them. We did not help our sealves - Errors were made in our own half that cost us the game. i think steve mac is looking to the 2013 world cup. This is why the average age of todays team was 24. I did not agree with his team selection and half way through the 2nd half i would have put lockers to center and coudjoue at full back. This means SAM T could play stand off and get more involved in the play. ENG are closer then the score line suggests.

[MrDave]

Totally agree wiggydoran the standard of refereeing was appalling, it probably didn't change the outcome of the match but made the sport look stupid on the international stage.

How a try can be given after clear knock-on in the video replay is beyond me. There were several forward passes not punished but none a blatant as the one for the Tuqui try.

The use of 'Refs Call' is the stupidest rule, if the referee needs to ask the video referee because he doesn't know whether to award a try why then ask the referee to make the decision again.

[Kittwazzer]

Wiggy. Me and my rugby crowd watched the game 'live' at lunchtime. Reading your comments, its as though you were here with us!

It was scandalous. But what can you expect in a country whose Rugby League is mired in scandal at present!

They are just taking the piss because they can!

[centralparkforever]

I am not impressed with the refering standerd shown in this game. AUS got most 50/50 call and then they got some calls they should not have had.

What about the incident involving Cameron Smith? He clearly taps the ball but then decides to go for 2 points,so what does Archer expect the England defence to do? The RFL should never have agreed to an Australian referee in the first place,surely it should be neutral referees, linesmen and video refs for each game

[Panchitta Marra]

Too many unforced errors giving Australia so much possession killed any chance of England posing a decent threat. Our pack was ineffective being starved of the ball, plus the amount of tackles being put in.

McNamarra's positional selections seemed a bit strange:
Cudjoe who has played nearly all his career on the wing is selected at centre, whilst Goulding, who has much more centre experience, is played on the wing.
Westwood at Loose forward with Joel Tomkins at second row, surely should have been the other way around.

We had players out due to injuries before we flew out and losing Morley was a big miss IMO, however both Australia and NZ have players out too, so we cant blame injuries.

The bloke officiating in the middle looked more like a peadofile than a referee. Some decisions looked totally biased in favour of the Aussies.

Mcnamarra seems happy, sitting, making notes in his little book, but thats about all he has to offer. His half time team talk wasnt that inspiring, the players hardly gave him eye contact.
For England/GB to progress, surely cannot be with Mcnamarra in charge.

On a lighter note:
Sam Burgess has a cracking Aussie accent developing, mixed in with his Yorkshire twang, made me laugh.

Any thoughts.

[wiggydoran]

I am not impressed with the refering standerd shown in this game. AUS got most 50/50 call and then they got some calls they should not have had.

What about the incident involving Cameron Smith? He clearly taps the ball but then decides to go for 2 points,so what does Archer expect the England defence to do? The RFL should never have agreed to an Australian referee in the first place,surely it should be neutral referees, linesmen and video refs for each game

I did not forget about this i was meant to put it in. Cameron Smith clearly tapped the ball and put it into play. 3 or 4 of the england players reacted to this the way they should have and went to tackle him. He did it again as well as if to say look what i can do and you can't get me. It like Cameron Smith forgot were he was and was on the park with his mates waiting around.

It was not only an AUS ref but and AUS video ref. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!!

Last week was not much better- ok we had a AUS ref but we had 2 video refs - NZ one and AUS one. Were is the english guy.

Did anyone see who the video ref was for the PNG V NZ game - Our old friend Russel Smith. Why could he not of Video reffed the ENG v AUS game???

Still it could have been worse a certain french guy could have reffed it.

[exile in Tiger country]

The officials were poor to say the least, but as everyone else has said, we made too many errors with the ball. One question, has James Graham EVER broken a tackle?

[stevethegas]

On a very sad day in the summer I watched England play Germany at soccer, and like everyone was incensed that a perfectly fair goal by Frank Lampard was disallowed on a referee's whim. It made soccer look like it is - a silly game with its head stuck in the sand.
But of course that was viewed from the moral high ground of a sport with video referees etc.
Sadly the argument fell a bit flat after Sunday's debacle. I quite agree with Wiggydoran who reasonably argued that you could take 18 points off Australia and give England 6.

In previous posts I have argued for a review of how the video ref is used and this game only strengthens my argument. We won't do away with it because we get too much benefit from the TV coverage, and SKY have been good for the game overall. So we can't put the genie back in the bottle - but please let's be consistent in our usage and decisions.

In the end actually I do think the Kangaroos were the better side, but we weren't given a fair crack of the whip. And that's not good for the game.

[UnsungPanapa]

You've got to Question Macnamara on his decision to take two points when when we had a repeat set on there line and they were on the back foot and a little rattled, at 6 a piece, does he really believe that by going 8-6 up we would be able to shut up shop, we rarely get any field position as it is because of our poor kicking game, so to give it away so easily for me was shocking

[cpwigan]

It was a terrible decision. I worry about his summary of the match. He think we dominated Aus particularly physically for long periods and that the game was a one off and that the mistakes were unusual.

Personally, I have watched 3 games v Maori/NZ and now Aus and retention of possession has been dire in ALL 3. We did not dominate Aus bar for 5 minutes and that is generous. We made the same defensive disorganised frailities out wide as we did in previous matches v Maori v NZ and now Aus. It looked as if England had perhaps practised plays in the opposing 20 but done nothing on exit sets, the sets that constitute often 60% or even more of a game.

Clueless